Satoko Fujii and
Orchestra New York
Bring Urgency and
Brio to 11th Album Entity
“This big band packs
fierce solo power, but Fujii flexes all that muscle masterfully.” ― Tom Hull,
The Village Voice
“Balances
rousing swing with probing experimentation, updating the big band tradition
with inspired verve and an abiding reverence for venerable customs.” ― Troy
Collins, All About Jazz
“Interlocking
riffs, driving rhythms and a tight band who do full justice to her imaginative
conceptions, showing the benefits of a lineup barely changed since their 1997
debut.” ― John Sharpe, The New York City Jazz Record
Featuring Oscar Noriega, Briggan Krauss, Ellery
Eskelin, Tony Malaby, Andy Laster, Natsuki Tamura, Herb Robertson, Dave Ballou,
Curtis Hasselbring, Joe Fiedler, Nels Cline, Stomu Takeishi, Ches Smith
The Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York, led by
one of this era’s greatest big band composers, sounds as fresh and exciting on
their eleventh recording, Entity, as
they did on their first in 1997. Working with a 13-piece big band that includes
a remarkable nine founding members, Fujii continues to inspire her
orchestra—and be inspired by them. This is an album that revels in the soloing
prowess of its individual members while showcasing the ever-inventive composing
and arranging of its founder and leader. The album will be released on February 14, 2020 via Libra Records.
“Since I have
been playing with this band for such a long time now, I know how they play,”
Fujii says. “And when I compose, I actually hear their sound. So, soloists
actually support my writing. For me composing for this band is more like
collaboration—when I compose I am already working with the band, even if I am
in Tokyo and they are in New York. Is this strange to say?”
Strange or not,
the music is unfailingly exciting, with an urgency and brio born of the mutual
admiration between performers and composer. “The music cannot be boring with
these musicians,” Fujii says. “This band inspires new ideas in me and I always
feel free to try something different because I know they will respond and make
it sound great.”
Fujii also
found inspiration for her compositions from another source. “I am not a scholar
and don’t have a deep knowledge of Buddhism,” Fujii says, “but I was reading
about some of Buddha’s ideas online and learned that he had the idea of
elementary particles centuries before physicists discovered them. The concept
inspired me to write the pieces on this album.”
Throughout the
album you can hear the chemistry between composer and orchestra. Fujii finds
all kinds of ways to frame soloists and provide full ensemble themes that set a
mood, often several different moods within the same composition. “Entity” opens
with an attention-grabbing blast of energy that launches guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Ches Smith into a bounding and weaving
duet. As the band sets up a regular two beat pattern, guitarist and drummer dip
and curl in off-kilter tandem around the pulse, beautifully highlighting their
subtle sense of rhythm and texture. Tidal surges of massed horns on “Flashback”
launch trombonist Joe Fiedler into a
boldly phrased solo that gives way to a searching, introspective unaccompanied
solo from Oscar Noriega. Trumpeter Herb Robertson’s virtuoso mute
technique highlights his outing with the band’s blue-chip rhythm section.
Fujii’s
majestic “Gounkaiku”
is a feature for trumpeter Dave Ballou’s
elegant melodicism, while “Elemental Particle” lets Ellery Eskelin cut loose with a fire-breathing solo. “Everlasting,”
a heart-wrenching ballad, pairs soloists in duets, first trumpeter Natsuki Tamura and trombonist Curtis Hassellbring, then alto
saxophonist Briggan Krauss and
baritone saxophonist Andy Laster.
On occasion
throughout the album, Fujii creates spontaneous arrangements to fit the moment.
“While we are playing,” Fujii explains, “I can hold up Sign 1, which means play
a long tone with any note, or Sign 2, which means play a glissando. There are
others, too. It may be a little bit like Butch Morris, but my signs are for
predetermined materials.” This can be heard in the opening moments of “Gounkaiku,”
when the band plays a series of long tones that glimmer like a necklace of
jeweled sounds or toward the end of “Flashback” when Fujii uses the long tones
to create tension before the band plays the rollicking closing theme. It’s a
part of the ongoing dialog between the composer and a seasoned orchestra fully
attuned to her creativity.
Critics and
fans alike hail pianist and composer Satoko
Fujii as one of the most original voices in jazz today. She’s “a virtuoso piano improviser, an original
composer and a bandleader who gets the best collaborators to deliver,"
says John Fordham in The Guardian. In concert and on more than 80 albums
as a leader or co-leader, she synthesizes jazz, contemporary classical,
avant-rock, and folk musics into an innovative style instantly recognizable as
hers alone. A prolific band leader and recording artist, she celebrated her
60th birthday in 2018 by releasing one album a month from bands old and new,
from solo to large ensemble. Franz A. Matzner in All About Jazz likened
the twelve albums to “an ecosystem of
independently thriving organisms linked by the shared soil of Fujii's artistic
heritage and shaped by the forces of her creativity.”
Over the years,
Fujii has led some of the most consistently creative ensembles in modern
improvised music, including her trio with bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Jim
Black and an electrifying avant-rock quartet featuring drummer Tatsuya Yoshida
of The Ruins. Her ongoing duet project with husband Natsuki Tamura released
their sixth recording, Kisaragi, in
2017. “The duo's commitment to producing
new sounds based on fresh ideas is second only to their musicianship,” says
Karl Ackermann in All About Jazz. Aspiration,
a CD by an ad hoc quartet featuring Wadada Leo Smith, Tamura, and Ikue Mori,
was released in 2017 to wide acclaim. “Four
musicians who regularly aspire for greater heights with each venture reach the
summit together on Aspiration,”
writes S. Victor Aaron in Something Else. As the leader of no less than
five orchestras in the U.S., Germany, and Japan (two of which, Berlin and
Tokyo, released new CDs in 2018), Fujii has also established herself as one of
the world’s leading composers for large jazz ensembles, leading Cadence
magazine to call her, “the Ellington of free
jazz.”
No comments:
Post a Comment